MKB Management Corp et al. v. Burdick et al.

04.28.14 - North Dakota passed a law in 2011 that would
effectively ban all medication abortions in the state. Even if the law did not
completely ban this type of abortion care, it would require doctors to abandon
current evidence-based protocols for providing medication abortions and instead
follow a medically obsolete method of medication abortion. As a result, a woman
seeking a medication abortion would be forced to take three times more
medication than recommended by the American Medical Association and the
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and would be required to
make additional unnecessary visits to North Dakota’s only abortion clinic.

Medication abortion (a combination of the
medications mifepristone and misoprostol) is a safe and effective alternative
to surgical abortion that can be used by women who are in the first 9 to 10
weeks of pregnancy. Women in the U.S.
have been safely undergoing medication abortions since 2000, when the FDA first
approved mifepristone. In fact, one out
of four women in the U.S. early enough in pregnancy to use medication abortion
as an alternative to surgical abortion chooses this method. Since the approval of mifepristone, newer,
evidence-based regimens have been proven to be safer, more effective, and less
expensive than earlier regimens. Laws
that require abortion providers to use outdated protocols when providing
medication abortions are contrary to current medical standards, and the
American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists have opposed them. By
requiring the provision of medication abortion to follow an obsolete protocol,
state politicians deny women the advantages of years of physicians’ practical
experience and scientific research. This
not only forces outmoded health care on women, but also intrudes into the
doctor-patient relationship.

The Center for
Reproductive Rights challenged the law in state court on behalf of the Red
River Women’s Clinic, a physician, and the clinic’s patients. After a trial in 2013, the Court struck down
the law, ruling that the “inalienable rights protected by the Constitution of
North Dakota must include a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy,” and that
the North Dakota medication abortion restrictions violated these rights. The
Court stated that any concerns about the safety of medication abortion had
either been “exaggerated or contrived,” and that the unconstitutional
restrictions “stand in the way of women’s health.” The Court added that this law would “force
physicians to depart from well-established standards of care [and] to abandon
the most fundamental tenets of their profession . . ., and to provide patients
with illogical and potentially tragic instructions regarding the availability
of any follow-up treatment that may be required on an emergent basis.”

The State appealed to the Supreme Court of North
Dakota. On October 28, 2014, the North Dakota Supreme Court reversed the trial
court’s judgment that had permanently enjoined the law.

A supplemental complaint regarding SB 2305’s
requirement of hospital admitting privileges was added to this case in June
2013. That case has since settled and more information can be found here.